


Sometime After

by seleneheart



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Post Sex Musing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:48:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22117384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seleneheart/pseuds/seleneheart
Summary: Parrish watches Lorne sleep and wonders about their relationship.
Relationships: Evan Lorne/Parrish
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Sometime After

David Parrish leans his back against one of the walls of Atlantis. He is nude, one leg bent, resting his arms on his leg. He stares at the stars through the window. He’s been in places where the stars are strange before this. He once spent an entire year in the Andes and the coastal forests of South America doing statistical sampling of that continent’s remaining monkey puzzle trees.

During that year, he gradually familiarized himself with the southern constellations. Some people claimed to find them difficult and clinical compared to the ones in the north. What romance was there in naming a constellation for a clock or an air pump? However, Parrish had always been charmed by the hopes and fears and pride of those eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers that were reflected in the constellations. He thought it entirely apt that those dead men had chosen what they did. His favorite was the constellation Circinus, the compass, redundant perhaps, considering mankind’s long habit of steering by the stars, but he loved the whimsy of it. 

When he went back to the States, he was off-balance for a few weeks, because the stars were wrong again.

But what he sees out the window now is totally outside his realm of experience. He thinks it absurd that he never once imagined that he might live out among the stars that he contemplated. And even beyond that . . . Pegasus was one of the few northern constellations that was visible from the south. He’d watched Pegasus, never dreaming that beyond it lay a galaxy full of wonders and fear and unexpected joy. 

The stars out the window are totally foreign and it’s never been a priority with the Lanteans to delve into the myths and legends that Pegasus inhabitants see in their stars. It’s a proper subject for some anthropologist, given that the gate still relies on said constellations. Maybe if he has time . . . someday . . . he’ll look into it.

His perusal of the stars is his way of avoiding the conundrum that is currently sharing the bed with him. Although, it’s rightly the other way around, because the bed Parrish is in doesn’t belong to him.

The man next to him is compact, muscular and possessed of a certain strength of both body and character. Parrish thinks that he will bear the marks of the physical strength for many days. The man’s undeniable attractiveness and sheer animal physicality in bed isn’t the source of Parrish’s late night star gazing.

Parrish has no idea how long his bed mate has been asleep. He didn’t pay enough attention to the stars to mark that. But Evan’s easy slide into slumber has Parrish half way on the way to being annoyed.

Contrary to the romantic scenes portrayed in movies, Parrish has never found it comfortable to sleep with another person. He debates whether he should leave or not. Lorne gave no indication of the twitchiness of a man wanting to be left alone after sex, and he made no indication that he was in the habit of kicking his partner out immediately afterwards. Parrish likes to think that he’s mature enough, and secure enough, that he doesn’t go racing back to his own place when there’s ambiguity about his partner’s intentions.

And it’s true . . . they haven’t talked about this, haven’t discussed whatever the hell it is that they do together. Although perhaps he should regard their making it to a bed as a step in the right direction. Or, it would be if they were in a relationship.

Parrish still isn’t sure whether it’s anything more than casual fucking.

Cursing himself, he finally brings his gaze back to the man in the bed. Parrish had expected that Lorne would sleep curled in the fetal position, protective and wary. Most of the military serving on Atlantis seem to have a reserve about them, a sense of looking behind every tree for threats. Which, Parrish supposes, they must be. But Lorne is sprawled on his back, relaxed and open as a child lost in sleep.

Lorne is military though, frighteningly good at it. Parrish wonders if perhaps Lorne’s easy slumber in his presence is an indication of a level of trust between them. That Lorne would freely let himself be vulnerable in front of Parrish leaves Parrish with an odd warmth that has nothing to do with desire.

He bends down to the place at the bottom of Lorne’s sternum, where his scent seems to gather. A small patch of hair nestles there, and Parrish loves to bury his nose in it, inhaling Lorne’s aroma. It’s an odd fetish, Parrish supposes, to be so entranced with someone’s scent. But now he knows all the places that Lorne’s scent lingers. The crease of his neck, of course, and between his balls, the obvious spots. But there’s another area at the base of Lorne’s spine, just below his waist, before the flare of his pelvis where the smell of Lorne is concentrated. The backs of his knees. Parrish is sure that there is more, and he hasn’t yet been allowed to taste and smell the mother lode . . . He imagines spreading Lorne’s ass cheeks, dipping his nose in and inhaling that cherished pure essence of Lorne.

In sleep, Lorne’s body is completely relaxed. His penis is soft in the aftermath of their pleasure. It looks small and harmless, but every time Parrish shifts position, twinges from his rear remind him that Lorne is very well-sized indeed. Parrish feels stretched open still, fucked loose and burning, and the remembered sensation makes him grin as a curl of pleasure unwinds in his belly.

Seeing Lorne like this, his dick little and curled up in Lorne’s thick pubic hair, makes Parrish feel protective. Not something that he would ever say in the light of day, on pain of being mocked. But even competent military men need tending. Parrish cups his hand over it, gentle as he would be with some shy animal. It is soft and warm. Lorne makes a little noise in his sleep, almost child-like, and Parrish smiles at it.

His body is starting to feel heavy, boneless. Lorne is sprawled out but there is plenty of room on the bed left for Parrish. He scoots down, finally letting his limbs relax, thoughts of star gazing vanishing in the haze of his weariness. He is so tired of arguing with himself and Lorne is warm.

Parrish awakens to Lorne staring at him, eyes wide with some emotion.

“You’re here,” Lorne says. “I wasn’t sure you would be.”

“Yeah.”

Lorne leans down, his nose at the base of Parrish’s sternum and takes a deep breath. His eyes are dancing with happiness when he raises his head, and Parrish smiles back, charmed that Lorne smells him in the same place that he smells Lorne.

“Are you going to stay?”

Parrish finds that the answer to that question came to him sometime in the long night, while he was sleeping perhaps. “Yes, I think I will.”


End file.
